Tag: economics

Categories
asides

America Is Choking Under an ‘Everything Shortage’

From America Is Choking Under an ‘Everything Shortage’:

Before the pandemic, reserving a container that holds roughly 35,000 books cost $2,500. Now it costs $25,000…

In short, supply chains depend on containers, ports, railroads, warehouses, and trucks. Every stage of this international assembly line is breaking down in its own unique way…

“I’ve been doing this for 43 years and never seen it this bad,” Isaac Larian, the founder and CEO of the toy maker MGA Entertainment, told Bloomberg. “Everything that can go wrong is going wrong at the same time.”

Categories
life

The Day My Family Didn’t Become Rich

On May 13th, 1998, Steve Jobs took the stage at at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California, and introduced to the crowd of mostly Apple employees the world’s first iMac computer.

Ten months earlier, Jobs had triumphantly returned to the company he co-founded after being fired in the mid-eighties. Since his departure, Apple’s value as a company had plummeted. According to the Newsweek article linked above, one of Apple’s board members, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, described the situation like this: “Apple is like a child who has a drug problem—Steve has come back to straighten her out.”

Like tens of thousands of hopeful Apple users across the world, I thrilled at the return of Jobs and delighted at the introduction of the iMac.

I was twenty years old at the time, living with my parents, and making slightly more than minimum wage working in an Irish-run pizza shop. What little money I had went to supporting my addiction to my girlfriend (lots of movies and dinners), to keeping my Suzuki Samurai running, and to paying my “rent” (my parents’ electricity bill).

I didn’t have any money saved, and working an hourly job, I lived (comfortably, thanks to my parents) paycheck to paycheck. 

My father, however, was a jet engineer for GE and had been gainfully employed in their aviation division for my entire life (and then some). We never talked finances in my family, but we lived comfortably in a wealthy suburb of Boston, so I know (and knew) he had some money to play with.

After watching the introduction of the iMac, I told my dad not only was it time to upgrade our 1993-ish Macintosh Performa, but if he was smart, he’d buy stock in Apple Computers. With Steve Jobs back in charge of the company he founded, an exciting new all-in-one flagship computer, and an assurance from Microsoft that they would continue to invest in Office for Mac for at least five years, Apple was primed for success.

In May 1998, Apple’s stock price was roughly $27 and its total valuation was around $3 billion.

Apple’s stock price (at the time of this writing) is now roughly $467, making it, as of this morning, the first U.S. company in history to reach a valuation of $2 trillion.

If only my father had followed my advice in 1998 and purchased a $1,000 stake in Apple Computers! 

Apple’s stock has split three times since 1998: twice for a 2:1 split, and once for a 7:1 split. I’m not a stock-market guy, but I think that means the following…

$1,000 of Apple stock in 1998 would have netted my father roughly 37 shares. Two years later, the stock split, which would have given my dad 74 shares. Five years later, it split again, which would have given him 148 shares. Nine years after that, it split seven ways, which would mean that, as of this writing, he would have had 1,036 shares of Apple stock.

As I mentioned, today’s price is roughly $467 per share. If my father followed my my investment advice, his shares would be worth roughly $483,000.

That’s a hefty chunk of change.

If only.

Categories
life

Our Real Town Meeting Day

In Vermont, Town Meeting Day is officially March 4th, and on March 4th, my small town of Poultney officially met and cast our ballots on all of the issues before us.

But with the yearly budgets passed and the officers elected, it was time to hold our real town meeting to discuss the long-term future of our town.

With the impending dissolution of Green Mountain College as a legal entity, we have lots of concerns about how our town of roughly 3,500 people will survive and thrive without the millions of dollars the college deposits into the town each year through property taxes, water and sewer payments, mortgages and rents, grocery checks, restaurant bills, hardware supplies, cups of coffee, four packs of beer, etc.

It’s a scary moment, and we need help, which was why representatives from the state of Vermont, various Federal agencies, and a variety of non-profits came to the meeting as well: because people genuinely want to help.

We scheduled the meeting for 10:30 AM on a Thursday, not the most opportune time for anyone with responsibilities, but roughly 200 people still found time to walk away from their jobs and depart from their routines, and show up.

I left the meeting feeling incredibly inspired.

Nothing got decided, and lots of questions remain unanswered, but the sense of democracy I experienced left me inspired.

The youngest attendee was in diapers, and when she started crying, her mother brought her into the hallway, but the mother then stayed by the door, helping others to hear while still trying to listen.

The oldest was…well…suffice to say, I sat next to at least a few great-grandmothers and fathers.

But there was also everybody in between. Recent and not-so-recent college alum (such as myself) who elected to settle in the community. Recently arrived retirees concerned with the health and wealth of the land they’ve chosen to call home. Lifelong townspeople with businesses, political offices, and seats on the chamber of commerce. Radically polyamorous twenty-somethings. Hardworking middle-aged tradesmen. Powerful women of color. A man whose first public thought for the campus was to create a safe-haven for refugees. An orange-blazer wearing member of the select board with a long list of entrepreneurial ideas. A green-flannel-wearing pseudo-intellectual with more dreams than he knows what to do with. A working mother, tasked with cleaning the room after we’ve gone, standing with us, listening and having her say, because she too is one of us.

We started with the challenges.

We asked ourselves, what are some of our biggest concerns? I shared my concern about the vibrancy of the community being diminished without the constant rejuvenation of newly arrived students and deciding-to-stay graduates, let alone the joy dee vivray brought in on the tongues and talents of professors and masters of the cultural arts (I didn’t say it quite like that).

Other concerns were more concrete: who’s gonna mow the lawn once the college is gone? Who’s going to ensure the security of the buildings and prevent them from becoming a haven for vagrants, especially in this area, where we too feel the pressures of the nation’s opioid crisis? How are we going to cover our town’s financial obligations without the influx of the college’s money? How much control do we actually have over the future of our town if anyone can come in and purchase what amounts to a core part of the town’s identity?

Next came the suggestions.

Speaking as a representative of the town’s local therapeutic school, I highlighted the state’s dire need for residential mental-health facilities dedicated to serving our youth.

Others suggested a veteran’s care facility; a federally funded school for nurses that would serve as a pilot program within Sen. Sander’s nationwide call for free colleges; a multi-use facility with a community farm, rooms for rent to (say) graduate students who are looking for an idyll location to finish their dissertations in peace, or to (say) religious groups for retreats, or to (say) small tech companies looking to increase their footprint without dramatically increasing their overhead, or to (say) etc.; the establishment of a new town center with offices and seminar rooms to rent on a regular or even hourly basis, not to mention a town-wide dining hall, a nondenominational chapel, an ample-sized theatre, an indoor basketball gym, a state-of-the-art fitness center, a public pool, a large solar array, etc.

And so many more great suggestions, some more realizable than others, some more radical than others, but all of them exciting, all of them different, and best of all, all of them good intentioned.

We listened to all the good people who want to help.

We ended the meeting by inviting the representatives of the various state and federal agencies, as well as the contributing nonprofits, to share their reflections on what they’d heard. To a person, they declared their optimism for what lies ahead of us, provided we keep an open mind and enter into the process with our hearts and our heads in the right place.

Nothing I experienced at that meeting suggests we will do otherwise.

And so I left inspired, and feeling good about calling this place my home.

Categories
life politics

Is Supporting the NFL Racist?

My wife and I watched Concussion Protocol last night, a short film that dramatically presents every concussion in the NFL this season. It reimagines the context, removing the visual thrill audiences get when we watch two professional athletes slam into each other at full force. It takes away the beauty of the violence and leaves us with only its after-effect, the irreparable brain injury that leads, we now know, to intense personality changes, increased depression, alcohol and drug addiction (as a way to self-medicate), and, ultimately, suicide.

In yesterday’s post about polytheism, I quickly referenced an interesting question, “What things am I doing now that will be considered racist or sexist by future generations?” After watching the short film and discussing it with my wife, I wonder if “Supporting the NFL” might be my best answer.

My wife noticed that a majority of the NFL players who suffered a concussion in the 2017-2018 season were persons of color. This should not be surprising. According to the annual report from the Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport, roughly 72% of NFL players are people of color and roughly 69% of them are African-American. It would make sense that of the 281 diagnosed concussions in 2017-2018 season, a majority would happen to a person of color.

With such a race disparity in the league and 2017’s 13.5% increase in the number of diagnosed concussions (the highest number of concussions in the last five years, despite the 47 rule changes the NFL has made since 2002 to reduce concussions), we have to ask: Is supporting the NFL and helping it become the most successful professional sports league in the world (by revenue) the everyday normal thing that future generations will consider incredibly racist?

According to that same report from the Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport, only two teams in the NFL have a majority owner who is a person of color. The Jacksonville Jaguars are owned by Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American who is the 158th wealthiest person in the world and the wealthiest Pakistani on Earth. He made his money supplying bumpers to the Big Three automakers and Toyota, but he also owns a team in the Premier League, which I’m sure helps improve his bottom line. His net worth is $7.5 billion.

The second majority owner of color is Kim Pegula of the Buffalo Bills. Mrs. Pegula is a woman of South Korean origins, having been born there in 1968. She was adopted by an American family in 1974. Later, while interviewing for a waitressing job in Western New York, she met her future husband, Terry Pegula, a man almost 20 years her senior who had made billions in fracking. Despite interviewing for a waitress job, her future husband hired her to work at one of his natural gas companies. They eventually married.

In the one interview I watched of Mrs. Pegula, she seemed interested and yet not particularly knowledgable, offering substance free responses to a local interviewer’s softball questions. I don’t want to take anything away from whatever work Mrs. Pegula might be doing in the front office, but one gets the impression that the Buffalo Bills’ “majority ownership by a person of color” is a legalistic fiction. I used to work for a company where the man who owned the corporation shifted its legal ownership to his wife so that the company could receive tax benefits and friendly financing terms for being “minority owned.” Despite the legal arrangement, everyone within the company knew the seat of power and authority never changed.

There may be two persons of color who are legal majority owners of an NFL team, but I suspect in reality there’s only one. Mrs. Pegula may be doing a fine job — she really might be — but she’s not the person with $4.5 billion in her bank account.

All of which is to say that the majority of the money generated by the on-field violence of 1,696 professional athletes, roughly 1,200 of whom are persons of color, winds up in the pockets of filthy-rich white people (and one filthy-rich Pakistani-American).

Now consider the extended economy that exists around the NFL.

Anheauser-Busch InBev, the largest brewer of beer in the world, is principally owned by three white families in Belgium. Yum! Brands, the owners of Pizza Hut, the largest pizza chain in America by revenue, is principally owned — once you follow the money — by a bunch of filthy-rich, primarily white men who sit on the boards of dozens of financial behemoths. The same goes for PepsiCo, owner of Frito Lay and all its brands of potato and corn chips (including Tostitos). While PepsiCo has a diverse board of directors, some of the people who sit on it include the son of an oil company tycoon, a former Google executive, a wife of a great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, and a Swiss pharmaceutical executive who served as the CEO of the world’s fifth largest drug company; in other words, filthy-rich white people.

According to one newspaper article I found (from 2011), NFL games add roughly $5 billion to the broader economy in NFL cities. Cleveland, for example, sees around $8 million in extra economic activity on days when the Browns play at home. The Meadowlands in New Jersey employs roughly 4,000 people on any given NFL Sunday, from ticket takers to parking lot attendants to janitors. The company that supplies the hot dogs and beers to the Meadowlands maintains a payroll of roughly $24 million. Other companies supply the napkins, the mops, the toilet paper. TV networks, of course, generate roughly $3.5 billion in advertising revenues. The list could go on.

In the United States, roughly 70% of all businesses are owned by white men, so we can assume that roughly 70% of all the revenue generated by the NFL’s extended economic sphere winds up in the hands of those same white men.

With no fine point, we’re talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars, all generated on the backs of 1,696 professional athletes, roughly 1,200 of whom are persons of color, and an increasing number of whom are enduring a level of brain trauma that will, for certain, decrease the length and quality of their lives, and in the process, the quality of lives of family members and friends.

“What things am I doing now that will be considered racist or sexist by future generations?”

The slave trade was a vastly profitable engine of the American economy, but we realize now that wasn’t worth it. Regardless of how much money one could make off it, slavery was wrong in every way.

I don’t want to suggest a 1:1 relationship between slavery and professional football. The highest paid player of color in the 2017 NFL season made over $12 million to run a ball into the end zone, while slaves generally didn’t get paid a dime. Of course, slaves also had no control over their past, present, or future, and they feared for their lives at the hands of their masters. Along with being worked to death, they were tortured, raped, and murdered, and their family members were taken from them like puppies from their mother. No one is raping wide receivers or selling off the children of free safeties.

But I do want to suggest that generations from now, people might look back on our support for the NFL and say, “It wasn’t worth it. It was wrong in every way. It was a league of predominantly white men making vast sums of money on gladiatorial violence done to the bodies of predominantly black men.”

I’m not sure I can disagree.

But I am sure that come Super Bowl Sunday night, I’ll gather with friends to watch my beloved New England Patriots (principally owned by a white guy) strive to achieve their sixth NFL championship. I’ll purchase craft-brewed beers from companies that are probably owned by (maybe not so filthy rich) white men and eat chicken wings produced with ingredients from primarily white-owned companies. I’ll bring with me to the party a dip whose ingredients are also produced by primarily white-owned companies. Virtually all of the economic activity I engage in on Sunday night will eventually stream into the pockets of an already-filthy-rich white man.

There are people who look at everything Thomas Jefferson accomplished and say, “Yeah, but he owned slaves.” Will future generations say of you and me, “Yeah, but they supported the NFL”?

I fear that maybe they will.

And yet still, I say with my wallet and my voice, “Go Patriots!”

Categories
politics

Hunt the Right Rabbit

I’m trying to understand the conspiracy of all this.

Yesterday, a friend of mine on Facebook continued to spread (in a forceful and angry manner) the debunked theory (see Snopes’ debunking article and Politifact’s explainer article) that Secretary Clinton sold 20% of the United States’ uranium to Russia for $145 million and she laundered the money through her and her husband’s non-profit Clinton Foundation.

In reality, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear agency purchased a 51% stake in a Canadian-based mining company that had originally been owned by South African interests. The Obama Administration, of which Secretary Clinton was part, needed to evaluate the purchase because U.S.-based subsidiaries of the Canadian company managed a significant portion of the U.S.’s uranium stock. Though her department had a place on the nine-member evaluation board (as did several other agencies), Secretary Clinton did not partake in the meetings, and even if she had, she had no say as to whether the deal went through or not.

Now, one of the previous investors in the Canadian company — a person who at the time of the deal no longer owned any stock in the company — had made a $131 million donation to the Clinton Foundation, but he made it over a year prior to Secretary Clinton even becoming Secretary of State and three years prior to the deal between the Russians and the Canadian-based company even being made. Around $4 million of the donations to the Clinton Foundation, however, were donated by other members involved at the time of the deal, but those members deny accusations of a quid pro quo exchange with Secretary Clinton, claiming that their donations to the Foundation were offered in good faith.

If the exchange was a quid-pro-quo offer, it was made with incredible foresight while also being very poorly managed, seeing that it first required Hilary Clinton to be elected President (which did not happen), and then it required the main investor to own stock in the Canadian company when the deal went through (which also did not happen). If the quid pro quo was about Russia being able to steal our uranium, it was also very poorly managed, seeing as the U.S.-based subsidiary that manages the uranium is not licensed to export it. When the story was first debunked by Snopes & Politifact, they both rated the story “False” or “Mostly False.”

The story came up again recently when The Hill reported on an active case at the Department of Justice involving Russian nuclear officials, Russian donations to the Clinton Foundation, Russian corruption of the U.S. uranium market, and a coverup in the Obama Administration (including by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who is the man now most responsible for investigating President Trump’s Russian connections).

The Hill‘s new findings on this many-years-old story are indeed concerning. Essentially, The Hill‘s reporting implies (though does not assert) that the Obama Administration covered up a story that clearly demonstrates Russia’s attempts to manipulate various aspects of our economy and our national security. The story also implies (though does not assert) that Secretary Clinton supported Russia’s efforts in exchange for millions of dollars. It also implies (though does not assert) that the man now responsible for investigating President Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia also played a part in the coverup.

I’m not going to agree or disagree with the facts as reported by both Snopes, Politifact, or The Hill. I believe all of the articles are reported in good faith and provide the facts as they are understood by the writers of those articles.

What I want to do is try to understand the conspiracy here.

Let’s say that high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration actively colluded with Russian agents to provide access to the United States’ uranium. The facts as they’ve been reported do not support the theory that Russians have smuggled, are smuggling, or will smuggle enriched uranium out of the borders of the United States.

They do support the theory, however, that Russians have influenced and may still influence the movement of that uranium within our borders. They also support the theory that a lot of individuals, both Russian and American, received a lot of dirty money in the process. And finally, they support the theory that some of those Americans may have been high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration.

But there are a few other facts we have to deal with too.

Like the fact that high-ranking officials in the Trump campaign and the Trump Administration also received a lot of dirty money in connection with Russian agents, starting with Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and extending to Trump’s former National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn (Ret.).

Like the fact that the Trump Campaign expressed an interest in colluding with Russian agents to take down Secretary Clinton during the election.

Like the fact that President Trump has significant financial relationships with known friends of President Putin.

Like the fact that President Trump’s Secretary of Commerce is (was?) the major stockholder of a Cyprus bank where Russian oligarchs are known to launder the money they steal from the Russian people.

Like the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies have reached a positive consensus as to whether Russian agents attempted to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

Like the fact that President Trump’s continued belligerence towards North Korea, Iran, undocumented workers, and others redirects American anger away from Russia and towards virtually anyone else.

In short, there’s a lot of facts we have to consider, and those facts imply (though do not assert) wrongdoing by high-ranking officials in both the Obama and the Trump Administrations. I’m interested in the conspiracy that connects all these reported facts together.

What’s the common thread here? It’s not Left vs. Right. It’s not Democrat vs. Republican. It’s not Black vs. White or Socialist vs. Capitalist. And with Hilary involved, it’s not even Men vs. Women. It’s what then? What’s the common thread?

Oh yeah. They’re all fucking rich.

Know your enemy people. It’s not who all the rich people on TV tell you it is. It’s not Mexican farmers or Russian cab drivers or Iranian students. It’s not the peasants in North Korea or the poor people in Pakistan. It’s not the people starving through the civil war in Syria or the people surrendering to Iraqi forces in Hawija. It’s not hurricane victims in Puerto Rico or redneck loggers in Montana. It’s not the fishermen who stab the dolphins or the college students who save the whales.

It’s one thing and one thing only.

It’s the fucking rich people. And they’re all in it together.

If there’s an actual conspiracy behind all of these reported facts, any single element that ties them all together, it can only involve the rich.

Is there any doubt that President Putin, President Trump, and Secretary Clinton are all rich?

Is there any doubt that their high-ranking officials are also rich?

Is there any doubt that the individuals who control corporate media are rich? That the individuals who control the military-industrial complex are rich?

Is there any doubt that the individuals who control the pharmaceutical giants, the energy companies, or the banks are rich?

Is there any doubt that the individuals who control the text book publishers are rich or that the ministers who control the megachurches are rich?

Draw any conspiracy you want — make it look like an Oilman’s plot, a Yankee plot, an Islamist plot, a Capitalist plot, a Vatican plot, a Jewish plot, a Hollywood plot, a Monsanto plot, a Banker’s plot, a Patriarchal plot, a White Power plot — draw it any way you like, and what you’ll find is that it only and always involves the rich.

Know your enemy people. And focus your anger thusly.